


Cold Light

by deskclutter



Category: Saiyuki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kouryuu, Koumyou, a river, voices, monsters. A reflection that runs through Genjo Sanzo's life to date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Light

**Title:** Cold Light  
**Day/Theme:** May 1st / between the click of the light and the start of the dream  
**Series:** Saiyuki  
**Character/Pairing:** Sanzo  
**Rating:** PG for language

  
At night, there are two rooms where Kouryuu's pallet is laid out in the austere parody of a child's bedding. There is the soft drench of candlelight in one room where the flicker lights up one space and there is the difference between the forbidding dark outside and the warming light inside. It is a pronounced division that says that there are lines in the world, and that it is better to be on the right side of the line rather than on the outside of it.

The candle flickers. Jagged shadows make their way along the wall when Kouryuu walks along the inside of the room. Kouryuu hmphs softly. He sits and watches the flickering. The candle spills light around itself unevenly, scattering the shadows into normality, and then back again within a blink. Kouryuu does not blink, and he does not miss the momentary shape of himself carved dark against the wall.

He has never been afraid of monsters in the night.

  
In the daytime, he accompanies his master down the corridors of the temple, his feet thumping softly against the wooden floorboards. When they go outside, there are no walls to pass, only other monks who stare and whisper when Koumyou Sanzo and his most favoured disciple pass. He sees envy and fear. His master does not appear to notice anything amiss, and when Kouryuu thinks about it, neither does he.

Birds pass overhead and Koumyou smiles. "Master?" Kouryuu questions, where no one else will.

"They are going home," Koumyou says. "Shall we go down to the river?"

  
Sanzo remembers the sound of a creaky old voice calling him a tanuki who came down from the moon, and the glow of cigarette ash trailing into the dark as smoke. He answers with all the brash certainty of youth, tempered only by grief and his own nature. The old man chuckles and presses the remains of his cigarette pack into Genjo Sanzo's hand.

The smoke wreathes the air, but it has nothing to do with Koumyou Sanzo's propensity for his favourite old pipe. The acrid stink is not the same and Kouryuu is not sweeping outside while his master sneaks a surreptitious puff. There is no one to hear his voice, and there are no voices for him to hear.

The glow does not cast monsters into stark relief.

  
They stand on the banks and the river runs past in a flurry of white. Debris swirls, the break of a branch and the tattered remnants of leaves. Rushes grow in quieter spots, and Koumyou does not point out which ones caught an abandoned child.

("I can't remember," he says, the picture of cheerful amiability.)

Kouryuu notes that they stand on one bank and beyond the other there is the beginnings of a forest. He cannot see past the trees. He doesn't try, after the initial glance. Instead he focuses on the river between, like his master does.

"Master," he says, after a while, and Koumyou shakes himself to the present again.

"I heard a voice," he begins, stops. Tries again: "All along the river."

Kouryuu listens. Koumyou continues. "All I remember is the river, and then I found you."

Kouryuu looks. There is one bank, and under his feet is another. Then he sees, and all that he sees is white water and a light.

He does not remember the rushes either.

  
The old man neglected to leave him a lighter. Genjo Sanzo finds one. He flicks it on, and the room turns into the semblance of Kouryuu's old room at Kinzan. Shadows flicker on and off. Genjo Sanzo rolls his eyes and lights his cigarette. It is an orange glow. Idly, he watches it, and reflects that it isn't the same as orange against blue. But he flicks the lighter on and off, on and off, and detachedly finds the spaces where the flame blurs against the dark. He does not watch the shadows.

One of the monks opens the door suddenly and stops dead, mouth agape in grotesque horror. Genjo Sanzo glares at him and says, "_Well_?" around the cigarette.

"N-Nothing!" the monk squeaks, and slams the door shut. Genjo Sanzo fights the urge to go out and shoot people.

  
He sees stone bars plastered with ofuda, sealing spells that are keeping something in. It is day, and the sun is behind him, calling forth drops of sweat to stain his robes. It is disgusting. He looks at the cave, and there are parallel bars, rough with irregularity, but enough to determine that the cage is not completely natural. Then he sees behind the bars and there is a child huddled in the corner with a dumbstruck look slashing its mouth open and its eyes wide.

He is here, outside in the sun, and the child is inside in the dark. In between them are bars, wide enough to slip through easily, but there are stone shackles holding the brat in. Fucking symbolism, he thinks. He reaches for the difference between them, and the restraints dissolve.

The brat doesn't look like he believes it. He'll see enough to understand when he's ready.

  
The other room Kouryuu knows at night is the one that emerges after he grows tired of highlighting the difference that spans the width of the temple walls. The candlelight is gone. Darkness floods the room, but outside he hears the night birds and as always, the river is rushing on and on. The wind shakes the trees and he imagines more leaves floating down the river, all the way out to the sea.

Moments pass; Kouryuu holds up his hand, and the cool light of the moon glows around it into the room along with the dark, as it has always done save when there is no moon, and even then, Kouryuu can see. He looks outside, where the forest stands and the newly-swept yard lies and he sees the moon above it all, watching and shedding light as carelessly as a cat sheds its hair all over the place.

He sees the river in his mind, all white surge and cold glint as the gap between the moon and the dark form as the play of moonlight on the churning water.

  
At night the moon smiles down on its tanuki as he calls the temple monks 'morons'. Chang An is no different from Kinzan in that respect, Sanzo acknowledges. He thinks of the two youkai in town he has to keep tabs on, and they are morons too. They're fucking pains in the ass. There are no divisions, he remembers, only the blurring between the light and the dark until they become the balance of the moonlit night. There are only idiots and other idiots.

Goku watches Sanzo, grinning. Sanzo snorts. The monkey hasn't learnt that yet. He lights up like a fucking candle every time Sanzo steps into the room.

"Moron," Sanzo christens him, but the light doesn't dim.


End file.
